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Being engaged is a way of doing life, a way of living and loving. It’s about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life
offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That’s what I want my life to be all about—full of abandon, whimsy, and in love. I want to be engaged to life and with life.
I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.
God finds us in our failures and our successes, and He says that while we used to think one way about things, now He wants us to think another way about those same things. And for me, I’ve realized that I used to be afraid of failing at the things that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.
I’ve learned that God sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a place where we want something so bad that we can’t see past it. Sometimes we can’t even see God because of it. When we want something that bad, it’s easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I’ve found it’s because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road.
I used to think God guided us by opening and closing doors, but now I know sometimes God wants us to kick some doors down.
Later that night as the storm raged outside, I led Maria up to the little room I had readied. When Maria and I finished dinner, I got down on a knee and asked, “Maria, will you . . . ?” Then the emotion of the moment was just too much for me and I couldn’t talk anymore. As has been one of Sweet Maria’s many outstanding characteristics ever since—she helped me finish what I had started, and said, “Yes.” These days I continue to tell Sweet Maria that I am much more experienced at loving her than she is at loving me—because among other things, I’ve been at it a couple of years longer than she’s
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Yet Jesus continues to select broken and splattered people not just as followers but as participants. He called people like me who can’t even figure out which end of a plastic bag to open His hands, He called people who trip every day His feet, and He called people who can’t figure out which way to turn a screw to tighten it or even stack a cake correctly the ones who would build a kingdom. And then, if we’re willing, He serves us up—rocks, small bits of asphalt, and all.
“You know what it is about someone that makes them a friend? A friend doesn’t just say things; a friend does.”
There is only one invitation it would kill me to refuse, yet I’m tempted to turn it down all the time. I get the invitation every morning when I wake up to actually live a life of complete engagement, a life of whimsy, a life where love does. It doesn’t come in an envelope. It’s ushered in by a sunrise, the sound of a bird, or the smell of coffee drifting lazily from the kitchen. It’s the invitation to actually live, to fully participate in this amazing life for one more day. Nobody turns down an invitation to the White House, but I’ve seen plenty of people turn down an invitation to fully
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words people say to us not only have shelf life but have the ability to shape life.
He’s asking us, “Will you take what you think defines you, leave it behind, and let Me define who you are instead?”
some religion looks like it’s wrapped in the right package, but it’s actually Crisco.
God doesn’t like it when people fake it. It’s the same as identity theft in a way, only the fakers are stealing God’s identity and using it to make people feel bad or force them to change who they are to fit into a particular religious community.
just like Sceva’s sons, they use Jesus’ name a lot, but it doesn’t seem that they have any of the power Jesus said would come with knowing Him. That power is easy to spot because it usually comes in the form of grace and acceptance, as well as sincere love and respect. It’s the kind of power that actually does things rather than just talking about them.
People don’t want to be told that their experiences were wrong or that their wrapper or someone else’s wrapper is made of the wrong stuff. Instead, we get to be the ones to show them real love from a real God.
Jesus was always talking about a reverse economy. He talked about how if you want to receive, you give. If you want to lead, you follow. That the poor are rich and you only really live for certain things if you are willing to die to them.
What I’ve decided is a pretty good idea is to just ask people where they’re going before you get in with them. If they aren’t heading where you want to end up, just wait in the ice plant by the highway a little while longer.
There’s a special relationship between a dad and a daughter, something God designed on purpose, I think. It’s not lost on me that of all of the names God could have asked us to call Him, we most often refer to Him as “Father.” I think that’s because He has the same kind of relationship in mind for us that I had in mind for my kids. I think a father’s job, when it’s done best, is to get down on both knees, lean over his children’s lives, and whisper, “Where do you want to go?” Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply
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God doesn’t talk to me in an audible voice because God isn’t a human being; He’s God.
That makes sense to me, because human beings are limited and God isn’t limited at all. He can communicate to us in any way He wants to anytime He wants to. Through flowers, other people, an uncomfortable sense, a feeling of joy, goose bumps, a newfound talent, or an appreciation we acquire over time.
The Bible says that right now we only know “in part”
what God does most of the time when He has something to say is this . . . He doesn’t pass us messages, instead He passes us each other.
It’s pretty clear from watching Jesus’ followers past and present that when you risk the real you, you’ll probably take a hit. God did when He hung Jesus out there.
That’s the way Jesus’ reverse economy works. God loves the humble ones, and the humble ones often don’t make it as first-round draft picks for the jobs with big titles or positions. But they always seem to be the first-round picks for God when He’s looking for someone to use in a big way.
Have you noticed that lots of people who trust God seem to be wired to live near the edge?
People who take huge risks aren’t afraid to fail. In fact, they love to fail. It’s because failing means they found the edge.
the Bible said the only weapon any of us really has is love.
But it’s love like a sword without a handle and because of that, sometimes we’ll
get cut when we pick it up. It’s supposed to be close contact, though. Love always is that way. I don’t think Bible verses were meant to be thrown like grenades at each other. They were meant for us to use to point each other to...
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I used to think I could learn about Jesus by studying Him, but now I know Jesus doesn’t want stalkers.
What’s up with equating “Bible study” with knowing God anyway?
Wouldn’t it be a horrible thing if we studied the ones we loved instead of bonding in deeper ways by doing things with them?
What I like about Jesus’ message is that we don’t need to study Him anymore to know Him. That’s what the religious people at the time were promoting. Collecting information about someone is not the same as knowing a person. Stalkers are ordinary people who study from afar the people they’re too afraid to really know. Jesus said that unless you know Him like a child you’ll never really know Him at all. Kids don’t care about facts, and they
certainly don’t study each other. They’re just with each other; they do stuff together. That’s what Jesus had in mind.
Some time ago I stopped thinking about being a lawyer as a career. Instead, I think of it as just a day job. Thinking about work as a day job has made a big difference in the way I approach what I do. It’s also helped me not to confuse who I am with what I do.
I started a nonprofit a number of years ago and now Sweet Maria and I think about my day job as a great way to fund the things we’re doing. Now when I put on a suit and tie or jump on a plane to go take a deposition, we call it “fund-raising.” It still makes me grin every time to say it this way. It’s like a really successful bake sale to get rid of bad guys.
But nobody can be defensive with their palms up.
love does whatever it takes to multiply itself and somehow along the way everyone becomes a part of it. You know why? Because that’s what love does.
Just like God’s Son arrived here, so did you. And after Jesus arrived, God whispered to all of humanity . . . “It’s your move.”
